Oxford History of Popular Print Culture - Volume Five: Us Popular Print Culture to 1860

What did most people read? Where did they get it? Where did it come from? What were its uses in its readers' lives? How was it produced and distributed? What were its relations to the wider world of print culture? How did it develop over time? These questions are central to The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, an ambitious nine-volume series devoted to the exploration of popular print culture in English from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present.

Volume five traces print's role in the lives of a wide variety of people who settled-or who were displaced or forcibly transported by settlers-in middle North America, from colonial beginnings through the mid-nineteenth-century proliferation of industrially-produced imprints until 1860, when the Civil War disrupted longstanding patterns. While the volume takes account of emerging technological and economic developments in production and distribution, it nevertheless through its focus on readers emphasizes surprising continuities over the longue durée of centuries.

Forty-one contributors from across disciplines consider either literary practices of diverse groups or specific genres of popular print passing through people's hands, which included advertisements, almanacs, captivity narratives, ephemera, lithographs, magazines, newspapers, nonfiction, novels, pamphlets, poetry, and slave narratives. In articulating imprint use and genre among groups ranging from free and enslaved blacks to native peoples to women of all races, contributors provide an unusually well-rounded view of print's everyday meanings. Because people often derived those meanings in relation to scribal production and oral communication, the diaries and letters they penned and transcriptions of words they spoke provide much of the book's evidence. The volume ultimately reorients the study of popular print culture in the early US from locally produced printed texts aimed at national readerships to the practices of readers who engaged the broad universe of imprints - not always American-authored-available to them.

List of contents

• General Editor's Introduction


• Introduction


• Part I. Foundations


• 1: Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray: Print Production and the Book Trades


• 2: David O. Dowling: Authorship


• 3: Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray: Readers


• 4: Jean Ferguson Carr and Stephen L. Carr: Literacy and Education


• 5: Wayne A. Wiegand: Social, Circulating, and Public Libraries


• 6: Kristen Doyle Highland: Bookstores and other Retailing


• 7: Wendy A. Woloson: Itinerant and Informal Distribution


• 8: Richard B. Kielbowicz: Literature in the Mail


• Part II. Preindustrial Era


• 9: T. J. Tomlin: Almanacs


• 10: Seth Perry: Bibles, Sermons, and other Religious Publications


• 11: Billy J. Stratton: Captivity Narratives


• 12: William Huntting Howell: Ephemera


• 13: Jennifer Mylander: Imports


• 14: Jared Gardner: Magazines to 1820


• 15: Meredith Neuman: Manuscript Culture and Print


• 16: Carol Sue Humphrey: Newspapers to 1820


• 17: Sandra M. Gustafson: Oral Genres and Print


• 18: Michelle Orihel: Pamphlets


• Part III. Mass Market Emergence


• 19: Carl Robert Keyes: Advertising


• 20: Cynthia Patterson: Illustrated Periodicals


• 21: Marcy J. Dinius: Lithography, Photography, and Print


• 22: Tom F. Wright: Lyceums, Public Lectures, and Print


• 23: Susan Belasco: Magazines from 1820 to 1860


• 24: Daniel Cavicchi: Music


• 25: Erika J. Pribanic-Smith: Newspapers from 1820 to 1860


• 26: Barbara Hochman: Novels


• 27: Matthew Short and Demian Katz: Story Papers and Pamphlet Novels


• 28: Michael C. Cohen: Poetry


• 29: Eileen Ka-May Cheng: Popular Nonfiction


• 30: Joseph Rezek: Transatlantic Currents in the Literary Book Trade


• Part IV. Segmentation and Diversity


• 31: Eric Gardner: Black Engagement with Print


• 32: Nicole N. Aljoe: Black Slave Narratives


• 33: James Emmett Ryan: Catholic Publishing


• 34: Sarah Wadsworth: Children's Literature


• 35: Phillip H. Round: Native Imprints and Readers


• 36: Paul Gutjahr: The Protestant Evangelical Press


• 37: Teresa A. Goddu: Reform


• 38: J. Brenton Stewart: Southern Imprints and Readers


• 39: Montse Feu: Spanish-Language Publications and Readers


• 40: Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray: Women Writers and Readers

About the author

Ronald J. Zboray is Professor of Communication and Director of the Graduate Program for Cultural Studies, University of Pittsburgh.

Mary Saracino Zboray is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh.

The editors have published extensively on antebellum print culture as well as on women's politicization in that era, and they have recently taken up, through numerous essays, print culture during the American Civil War.

Summary

What did most people read? Where did they get it? Where did it come from? What were its uses in its readers' lives? How was it produced and distributed? What were its relations to the wider world of print culture? How did it develop over time? These questions are central to The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, an ambitious nine-volume series devoted to the exploration of popular print culture in English from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present.

Volume five traces print's role in the lives of a wide variety of people who settled—or who were displaced or forcibly transported by settlers—in middle North America, from colonial beginnings through the mid-nineteenth-century proliferation of industrially-produced imprints until 1860, when the Civil War disrupted longstanding patterns. While the volume takes account of emerging technological and economic developments in production and distribution, it nevertheless through its focus on readers emphasizes surprising continuities over the longue durée of centuries.

Forty-one contributors from across disciplines consider either literary practices of diverse groups or specific genres of popular print passing through people's hands, which included advertisements, almanacs, captivity narratives, ephemera, lithographs, magazines, newspapers, nonfiction, novels, pamphlets, poetry, and slave narratives. In articulating imprint use and genre among groups ranging from free and enslaved blacks to native peoples to women of all races, contributors provide an unusually well-rounded view of print's everyday meanings. Because people often derived those meanings in relation to scribal production and oral communication, the diaries and letters they penned and transcriptions of words they spoke provide much of the book's evidence. The volume ultimately reorients the study of popular print culture in the early US from locally produced printed texts aimed at national readerships to the practices of readers who engaged the broad universe of imprints — not always American—authored-available to them.

Additional text

US Popular Print Culture to 1860, a remarkable collection of forty essays, demonstrates the breadth of the field of print culture studies in the United States and points toward its future potential for literary scholars, historians, and other scholars of the early and antebellum periods.

Report

US Popular Print Culture to 1860, a remarkable collection of forty essays, demonstrates the breadth of the field of print culture studies in the United States and points toward its future potential for literary scholars, historians, and other scholars of the early and antebellum periods. Jennifer Putzi, William and Mary, Early American Literature

Product details

• Authors: Ronald J. (Professor of Communication and Zboray
• Assisted by: Mary Saracino Zboray (Editor), Ronald J. Zboray (Editor), Zboray Ronald J. (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 21.02.2019
• EAN: 9780198734819
• ISBN: 978-0-19-873481-9
• No. of pages: 736
• Series: Oxford History of Popular Print Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, Popular Culture, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, c 1500 onwards to present day, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: general, History of the Americas, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, History and Archaeology